“Waiting is what a true house is about. Making it ours, making it settle, pinning it and us to the seasons, to the months and to the years.” Completely obsessed with this quote, taken from the beginning of Elmet by Fiona Mozley. While the boat currently…

Ever since John Lewis announced it was going gender neutral in its children’s clothing range, I can’t help considering how kids’ authors are also doing their bit for progressive wardrobes. I’m mainly thinking of Katherine Rundell, to be honest, after flying through Rooftoppers and now…

A nice thing about deciding to reopen the shop soon and writing here again is the steer it’s given. Maternity leave can be a funny old business – a not-quite-sure-how-to-navigate-days. Often even before then too… But maybe all that was missing was a sense of…

What Does Baby Want? The book that’s become a sort of shorthand for my life at the moment. Nothing captures the frustrations of a tits-and-tears Groundhog Day quite like it. You can watch the whole story on Phaidon’s website, where the climactic double-page jugs are…

Pregnancy doesn’t have much to recommend itself (although the French try their best with queue-jumping rights in the supermarket). Compiling a ‘first library’, however, was one of the few things that offered unadulterated knocked-up pleasure during the latter stages. There’ll be much more info about…

The boat has lain fallow now for over a year following a move to France and the arrival of a baby. While it’s currently serving as a home-cum-indoctrination ground for the bookshop heir, that’s all about to change over the next 12-plus months as we gear…